This will help to build an alternative to ESPN and could create more room for the SBC. Compitition is always a good thing.


Article Published: Thursday, August 26, 2004

mountain west conference

League to trade ESPN for CSTV in '06

By Natalie Meisler
Denver Post Staff Writer




The Mountain West Conference, a staple of "Big Monday" basketball and Thursday night football since the league's inception in 1999, is trading the massive ESPN exposure for a potentially more lucrative contract with upstart College Sports TV, according to conference sources.

The MWC will remain with ESPN until the new contract takes effect in the fall of 2006.


CSTV is currently unavailable in the MWC's four biggest media markets - Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and San Diego - except for DirectTV satellite subscribers who pay an additional fee. By the time the agreement goes into effect, coverage could have expanded cable distribution.


The MWC called a news conference for today to announce details. MWC and CSTV officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.



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The MWC's current contract with ESPN is a seven-year, $48 million deal. The new contract, sources said, would be at least $77 million over seven years. It would be divided nine ways with the addition next year of Texas Christian.


The current contract allowed ESPN to match any third party offer, MWC commissioner Craig Thompson said last week. Apparently, that did not happen.


"We did not agree on the value of the product," ESPN director of media relations Josh Krulewitz said. "Given our overall inventory of college football and basketball, we chose to decline their extension offer. It's a competitive environment and they pursued another home. We wish them well."


New York-based CSTV is a 24-hour sports network that programs nonrevenue college sports such as volleyball, soccer, lacrosse and baseball in addition to football and basketball. It is available on Time Warner, Adelphia and Insight cable systems. It recently announced the signing of former Colorado football coach Rick Neuheisel as an analyst on a Wednesday preview show and Sunday recap show.


MWC presidents this summer expressed opposition to 10 p.m. basketball starts after the current ESPN contract expired and voted against Tuesday or Wednesday football games. Missed classroom time and fan inconvenience were cited as the reasons. The league's basketball coaches hoped to eliminate the late Monday starts in the upcoming season and go back to a Thursday-Saturday rotation but each school was assigned two late Monday games. Thompson said last week the league would have had to give ESPN a rebate to drop out of the late Monday time slots this season. Those games start at 10 p.m. in the Mountain Time Zone.


MWC football and basketball games have not drawn well on ESPN by comparison to other Division I conferences, with some exceptions. The 2002 Notre Dame-Air Force football game recorded a 4.07 national rating, but last season's triple overtime Air Force-Utah game drew a .55 rating. The SEC average for its football games, according to ESPN figures, was 1.84 a year ago.


Natalie Meisler can be reached at 303-820-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com .

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Quote:This will help to build an alternative to ESPN and could create more room for the SBC.

Looks like they are calling ESPN's bluff, goo luck to them and CSTV

Quote:Compitition is always a good thing.

Totally agree

It is a huge risk for the MWC! I applaud their willingness to challenge ESPN and introduce some healthy competition into the process.

Go MWC!!!

It seems to be official:

CSTV: College Sports Television and The Mountain West Conference Announce New Partnership

Alliance Promises More Games to More People across More Sports Than has Ever Been Possible

Aug. 26, 2004

New York, NY - CSTV: College Sports Television ( http://www.collegesports.com ) and the Mountain West Conference (MWC), one of the top Division 1 intercollegiate athletics conferences, announced today a visionary partnership that will revolutionize the college sports landscape. The landmark agreement includes the first NCAA Division 1-A football and men's basketball conference wide deal for CSTV, beginning in the Fall 2006. The CSTV/MWC partnership creates a fully integrated multi-media relationship that will deliver more games to more people in more homes across more sports than any other Conference partnership.

The CSTV/MWC alliance will provide substantially greater exposure and programming control for the Conference. The exclusive agreement incorporates all conference-related media and marketing rights, including, all television, national over-the-air and satellite radio, video-on-demand, online and broadband and exclusive corporate sponsorship rights . With this, alumni, boosters and fans will be served with more sports, more directly, in more ways, more often.

"This is an ideal college sports match," said Craig Thompson, Commissioner of the Mountain West Conference. "This partnership will provide the Mountain West Conference more exposure over a variety of mediums than any other conference. Day-to-day, MWC fans will relish the additional exposures provided to all our championship sports. "

"CSTV has become the on-air and online home for college sports and college sports fans coast-to-coast," said Brian Bedol, President and CEO, CSTV. "In just five years, the MWC has come to represent the best of what college sports is all about. Across all of our media platforms, we will offer MWC sports fans more games, from more sports than ever before."

The two entities will partner in programming, marketing and scheduling that will include a significant increase of coverage for football, men's basketball and women's sports. With new and emerging technologies, alumni and fans of each conference institution will have the opportunity to experience every sport from any geographic location whether on television, radio, the internet, wireless or video-on-demand.

About College Sports TV
CSTV is comprised of two business units: College Sports TV and CollegeSports.com. College Sports TV televises regular season and championship event coverage from every major collegiate athletic conference, in addition to nine NCAA Championships. The network's innovative mix of event, studio and documentary programming cover and promote college sports from more perspectives than any other network. CollegeSports.com, the most-trafficked college sports Web site, and its network of nearly 160 official athletic sites are the number one online source for college sports broadband content, news, information, scores and analysis. College Sports TV currently has agreements with distributors that represent more than 52 million homes nationwide, including the top three national distributors: Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner Cable. CSTV was co-founded by President and CEO Brian Bedol, Chairman Steve Greenberg and Executive Vice President Chris Bevilacqua. Bedol and Greenberg co-founded Classic Sports Network, which they sold to ESPN. It is now ESPN Classic. Bevilacqua is a former senior executive with Nike Inc., where he headed the company's successful foray into the college market.

About The Mountain West Conference
The Mountain West Conference is one of the top collegiate conferences in the college sports arena and is compromised of eight Division I-A institutions including, The United States Air Force Academy, Brigham Young University, Colorado State University, University of New Mexico, University of Nevada - Las Vegas, San Diego State University, University of Utah, University of Wyoming. Beginning July 1, 2005, Texas Christian University will become the ninth member of the MWC.

<a href='http://www.collegesports.com/sports/m-footbl/stories/082604aaq.html' target='_blank'>LINK</a>

This really is a good thing. This will only strengthen CSTV which will create a vaible alternative. Hopefully ESPN won't fill all those spots with BCS schools(fingers crossed). I hope Wright W is calling ESPN trying to get us some TV time.

<span style='font-family:Times'><span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:blue'>You can't blame the Mountain West, and seriously, the Sun Belt should consider the same thing if CSTV would have us.

ESPN along with others like ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox have become the gullible sidekicks to the money-hungry Power $ix conferences. Why settle for one or two nationally televised game on not even the main station while you can catch regular season games with crappy BC$ teams on a regular basis on these stations.

I think doing something similar to what the MWC did is showing these Power $ix butt-kissers that there are other opportunities just as good and that pay better. But most importantly they show these BC$ sympathizers that they are cared about by other media outlets that don't oversaturate their air time with the Power $ix conferences.</span></span></span>